Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/277

 the fine arts were not without native votaries. West and Copley, fathers of American art, both born the same year, had commenced as portrait painters, the one in New York, the other in Boston; but they soon sought in London, a wider field and more extended patronage." Mr. Hildreth also notes, that the law had assumed the rank of a distinct profession at this date. Henry, Otis, Dickinson, and others, among lawyers, were already enrolling themselves among the most vigorous opponents of those who invaded the rights and liberties of the colonists; and their influence was felt sensibly in the colonial Assemblies.

We have enlarged upon these matters not only on account of their interest in a historical point of view, but I also because of their importance at the present crisis in American affairs. The recuperative energies of the colonies were remarkably displayed; and their ability to assert forcibly their rights, I and to maintain them manfully, became more and more evident to themselves, if not to those in power in England. The feeling of self reliance was engendered on all hands; and it seemed to be almost demonstrable, that the Americans were competent for any emergency which might arise in the progress of their social, political, or even military affairs. "In the bosoms of this people," as John Quincy Adams eloquently says, "there was burning, kindled at different furnaces, but all furnaces of affliction, one clear, steady flame of . Bold and daring enterprise, stubborn endurance of privation, unflinching intrepidity in facing danger, and inflexible adherence to conscientious principle, had steeled to energetic and unyielding hardihood the characters of the primitive settlers of all these colonies. Since that time two or three generations of men had passed away—but they had increased and multiplied with unexampled rapidity; and the land itself had been the recent theatre of a ferocious and bloody seven years' war, bet ween the two most powerful and most civilized nations of Europe, contending for the possession of this continent. Of that strife the victorious combatant had been Britain. She had conquered the provinces of France. She had expelled her rival totally from the continent over which, bounding herself by the Mississippi, she was thenceforth to hold divided empire only with Spain. She had acquired undisputed control over the Indian tribes, still tenanting the forests unexplored by the European man. She had established an uncontested monopoly of the commerce of all her colonies. But, forgetting all the warnings of preceding ages, forgetting the lessons written in the blood of her own